Dylan pumps up Hersheypark crowd

Intelligncer Journal
Published: June 25, 2007
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

Wearing a Western-style suit he's favored for the last 10 years or so, his band decked out in matching gray silk ensembles with fedoras, Bob Dylan and his band at times looked more like Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys on Sunday evening at The Star Pavilion at Hersheypark Stadium.

There was enough swing in numbers like "Summer Days, Summer Nights" and "Rollin' and Tumblin'," with the band's two guitars and pedal steel sounding like a full horn section in some California dance hall circa 1960. But as much as Dylan has affected the Old West dandy appearance for more than a decade, his sound is as fresh as it's been since his triumphant return 10 years ago with "Time Out of Mind."

Let's remember, in some of Dylan's best shows in the 1970s, he performed while wearing grisly white face makeup. Dylan and his band played to a moderate-sized crowd Sunday night, seated behind the usual stage setup for stadium shows at Hershey. That meant he played into the sunset for the first few numbers - a dazzling effect.

While his playlist at times may have seemed a bit too heavy on the 12-bar blues shuffles he's been fond of lately - sometimes sounding like little more than vehicles for the affecting couplets only he can seem to dish out at will - the performances were spirited and lively.

Dylan himself spent almost the entire night, save for one or two opening songs, at stage right, standing at an electric organ. He played leaning into the keys with his left foot back. Although he's certainly no Augie Myers or Garth Hudson, he played like he meant it, nimbly switching to harp on a few select tunes.

For the most part, he let others - Denny Freeman on guitar and Den Herron on pedal steel, mandolin and fiddle - take the instrumental spotlight. The audience, spread out on the lawn, stood for most of the set and gave its most enthusiastic reactions to songs that hinted at Dylan's looming mortality. One song was old, the other new.

"My Back Pages," rendered into a 1966 hit by the Byrds, was the old tune. Each time he sang the refrain about being so much older then and younger now, it got a cheer. "Is youth wasted on the young?" the song seems to ask. Certainly not on the 50-something guy in the Hawaiian print shirt swaying with his arms in the air as if he were at church. On a newer tune, the singer asked "Am I over the hill? Am I past my prime?" A great "No" came up from the audience. "Well then," he sang, "we can still have a wonderful time ... ."

And indeed Dylan's age did show Sunday night, as on all nights in recent memory, but like Ella Fitzgerald before him, Dylan has learned to use his aging pipes as a new creative tool. He couldn't hit the high-pitched snarl of "Highway 61" as he did many years ago, but instead he gave it a sinister growl befitting its apocalyptic imagery. And when he stood with his five-man band at center stage to receive the audience's final ovation, he did so with his legs spread in a fighter's stance, holding the microphone stand like a gunslinger.